For the longest time, those of us who occupy the role of the CISO have fought for our seat at the 'big table.' Although it appears some of us are being invited into the C-suite, there is still a long way for us to go.This is highlighted in a 2021 report provided BT, which places "CISOs under the spotlight" and illuminates some interesting and...

The FBI is reminding organisations of the serious threat posed by business email compromise (BEC) scams, declaring that it caused over $1.8 billion worth of losses to businesses last year. The newly-published annual cybercrime report from the FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) reveals that it had received a record number of complaints and...

The objective of an organization when implementing cybersecurity controls is to eliminate risk, but this oftentimes involves settling for managing risk at an acceptable level. Each organization defines what that acceptable level is depending on several factors including the environment, the criticality of function, the asset type, etc.There are many...

Another year, another new set of cybersecurity threats to overcome, outwit and mitigate against. At the beginning of 2021, the cybersecurity world was informed by CISA (the USA Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency) of a spate of attacks targeting cloud environment configurations, supposedly occurring as a result of the increase in remote...

The coronavirus pandemic has added new layers to the threat landscape facing corporate security leaders in 2020 and going into 2021, as well. As businesses and workforces sought to adapt rapidly to remote working at scale, malicious groups and other threat actors began exploiting opportunities to target stressed people and systems with malware. The...

Craig Young, Principal Security Researcher at Tripwire, unpacks the modern security researcher's toolkit to reverse engineer complex designs. https://open.spotify.com/episode/3Je17m2Sc4mNGMcDD8Cc45?si=wrdchOOLTJ-KQOxtyw0Low Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5UDKiGLlzxhiGnd6FtvEnm Stitcher:...

Getting incentives for the best security practices is a win-win for all healthcare-related entities. For one, you are getting incentives, and secondly, you are making sure that you have a rock-solid defense in terms of security. Many organizations find that the rules and regulations that HIPAA entails are too extensive and overwhelming, however....

Police in the Netherlands and Belgium have made hundreds of raids, and arrested at least 80 people, after cracking into an encrypted phone network used by organised criminals. In a press release, Europol said that crime-fighting authorities in France, Belgium and the Netherlands had not only arrested a large number of suspected criminals, but also...

With a growing number of threat sources and successful cybersecurity attacks, organizations find themselves in a tricky spot if they wish to survive cyberspace. Oftentimes, the adversaries are not the challenge; the obstacle is the organization’s culture. Just like culture influences who we are as a people, culture influences the cybersecurity tone of...

The purpose of every security team is to provide confidentiality, integrity and availability of the systems in the organization. We call it “CIA Triad” for short. Of those three elements, integrity is a key element for most compliance and regulations.Some organizations have realized this and decided to implement File Integrity Monitoring (FIM). But...

Today’s VERT Alert addresses Microsoft’s March 2021 Security Updates. VERT is actively working on coverage for these vulnerabilities and expects to ship ASPL-933 on Wednesday, March 10th. In-The-Wild & Disclosed CVEs CVE-2021-26855 CVE-2021-26857 CVE-2021-26858 CVE-2021-27065 These CVEs are part of the bundle of Exchange vulnerabilities that...

In this blog series, I will be putting the spotlight on useful Ghidra features you may have missed. Each post will look at a different feature and show how it helps you save time and be more effective in your reverse engineering workflows. Ghidra is an incredibly powerful tool, but much of this power comes from knowing how to use it effectively. ...

Have you ever worked with a company that operates as “close to broken” as reasonably possible? Companies that follow that mindset usually do not have the most robust security practice, and they certainly will walk very close to the edge of compliance. Even if you don’t work in such a dysfunctional enterprise as described above, many companies still...

We see the word "cyber" everywhere today. It's included in all the hashtags, events names and even in hand sanitizer available for purchase at Toys ‘R Us: Cyber Clean (72% ethanol alcohol, with aloe.)With the market booming and the buzzword exploding, many of us still don’t understand what this vague word means. We’re simply toeing the line, either...

Business Email Compromise (BEC) scammers, who have made rich returns in recent years tricking organisations into transferring funds into their accounts, have found a new tactic which attempts to swindle Wall Street firms out of significantly larger amounts of money. According to a newly published-report by Agari, scammers are seeking to defraud...

Ransomware today is a billion-dollar industry. It’s crippled industries like healthcare. In 2017, for instance, WannaCry brought much of the United Kingdom’s National Health Service to its knees using the EternalBlue exploit. It was just a few weeks later when the NotPetya ransomware strain leveraged that same vulnerability to attack lots of...

As Marcus Hutchins was on his way home to the UK after attending Def Con and Black Hat in Las Vegas, NV, the FBI arrested him. This event sparked immediate internet outcry, especially among the cybersecurity community, as Hutchins was better known as MalwareTech and had just made cybersecurity fame by stopping the WannaCry ransomware outbreak a few...

Tripwire's February 2021 Patch Priority Index (PPI) brings together important vulnerabilities from Apache, VMware and Microsoft.First on the patch priority list this month is a patch for Apache Tomcat. The Apache Tomcat "Ghostcat" vulnerability, identified as CVE-2020-1938, has been recently added to the Metasploit Exploit Framework.Next on the list...

Have you ever noticed how closely your role as the CISO of your organisation resembles that of the Wizard from “The Wizard of Oz?” As the Wizard, you are expected to be all-knowing, all-seeing and all-powerful. Your role is to keep everyone safe from the evils of the world while frantically pulling levers, pressing buttons and turning dials behind the...

I subscribe to a newsletter from Gary Burnison, CEO of Korn Ferry. His messages address a wide variety of career and personal issues in a thoughtful and educational manner. A recent Special Edition message was titled Exceeding Potential. It specifically addressed how opportunities present themselves and how to view and leverage them. He closed his...